


Little Starlight

by Lightspeed



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Agelessness, Death, Gen, Immortality, Little Lamplight, Named Sole Survivor - Freeform, Spoilers, Starlight Drive-in, Synths (Humans)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:59:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightspeed/pseuds/Lightspeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE MAIN PLOT</p><p>Shaun was built to be a child, and that's all he'll ever be, and after watching everyone he knows and loves keep growing old and dying, leaving him a child amongst adults who view him as strange and unnatural, he decides to take after one of his fathers and lead a place where there are no grown-ups.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Starlight

That place had been so tall.

The towering screen that had shown movies projected onto its broad, slightly curved surface. The projection booth seated atop a snack bar and flanked by winged entrance overhangs. The fences, the lights, the spectacle of it all.

Two hundred years later, after bombs and blight and the death of the land, that enormous screen had become the backbone of homes, its structure forming the anchor against which a slew of apartments had been built. They had called it the Starlight Arms, in reference to the tenements of old, and its top floor had housed its designer, the man who had taken the empty theater and turned it into a town.

It had housed Shaun Weyland too, with its wind turbines atop and bath house in back, and he lived there with his fathers, his fathers's friends and lovers, and the settlers who had come to call Starlight, as the town had been christened, their home. Shaun's father, Elias, had been an architect and a contractor, and after that a soldier, before he had become a victim of cryogenic freezing. He had built the town from nothing, provided homes, organized works to purify water, erected buildings for hospitals, shops, a guard house, and a hospital. He cared for the wellbeing of his citizens by organizing an efficient farm and installed plumbing that led away from the settlement. A bar and hotel had soon coccooned the snack bar, and with it came trade within their well-guarded cement walls. It was safe, it was welcoming, and it was home.

Soon, Shaun's other father, RJ, had brought his own son Duncan from where he was living in the Capitol Wasteland. He had been sick, and Elias had helped him cure Duncan. Shaun and Duncan became fast friends, but eventually, Duncan grew up.

All of the children did. The adults grew old, and died of old age. Shaun and Duncan had to bury their fathers eventually, after time had taken them, a grown man standing beside what looked like a boy of only ten as they grieved.

Shaun never grew up. He stayed the same, and at first, it frightened the settlers he came to know as his family and friends. Some of his fathers' friends understood better than others. Hancock never grew up either, though that was more of a maturity thing. It was Nick and Curie who knew better. They knew his struggle. Shaun was a synth, just like them. But unlike them, adults, able to fit in a little better in spite of their own troubles, he was built to be a child. He would never age, he would never change. His mind matured, as would happen to an organic mind, but even then, some things he would never quite grasp. Eventually, everyone either died or left, and he and his niece and nephew buried Duncan and his wife. His niece and nephew were grown adults by then, with their own children.

None of them lived with him anymore. The apartment complex still housed the citizens. More homes were built into the walls and along the grounds. The top floor, once his family's penthouse, was his, and his alone, high above everything. He had never moved into the master bedroom. He had never outgrown his own childhood bed. Though the toys held less for him these days. Jangles the Moon Monkey had lost his charm.

So Shaun had left. It was so tall there. Too tall. In a world that grew up, he would only reach so high. He wandered for a time, until he came upon the ruins of an old vault near the glowing sea. It had housed many tenants over the centuries, and after a few days of gun-tag with the raiders currently holed up there, followed by still more time spent in disposal and cleaning, he declared himself its newest tenant. Radio in hand, he began reaching out for settlers to join him. The orphans, the runaways, the wasters who were not yet Tall. He hung his lantern at the door, and traded in Starlight for Lamplight.

Shaun had always been good at building things. It had been programmed into him from the start. He'd learned more from his father, Elias. He knew how to wire, to plumb, to create a proper home from the remains of the gutted vault. From his other father, Duncan's father, RJ, he had learned something just as important.

“Shaun! Shaun!”

Shaun looked up from his journal, spread out on the desk in his room. He down the whittled stub of his pencil in surprise as he cast wide eyes to the armoured eight-year-old standing in his doorway. “What's wrong, Tina?”

“Those mungos at the gate again! They say they wanna buy more water from us!”

Shaun smirked. He stood and pulled on his helmet, snatching up the worn rifle he kept beside his bed. “They're too lazy to build a damn purifier, I swear. Alright, we'll take their caps, the suckers. Try and find out if they have any gumdrops. Sammy's been needin' a fix for weeks.”


End file.
